Parents concerned about Burlington shelter proposal

Jan. 3, 2013

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

That was the prevailing sentiment expressed by parents during a discussion Wednesday night on whether the gymnasium that preschoolers use at the North Avenue Alliance Church should moonlight as a winter overflow shelter for Burlington’s homeless population.

As the temperature plunged below zero outside, Pastor Jim Stewart and representatives from various organizations described the shelter proposal to about 40 parents and congregants inside the church’s youth center.

Assurances were made. Matt Young, head of the HowardCenter’s Street Outreach Team, said homeless guests, 10 at first, would be repeatedly screened every day by trained professionals, bused to the gym hours after the preschool closed and bused from the gym hours before it reopened. The gym would be cleaned and sanitized each morning, said Valerie Brousseau, community relations director at the Burlington Emergency Shelter. And the church could pull out of the program at any time, Stewart said.

Several of the more vocal parents in the room remained incredulous.

“There’s a place for this, just not here with my child,” said Alan Young. He said he would pull his child from the preschool if the proposal went through. So did Simone Tefts.

“They just don’t go together,” Tefts said.

Burlington’s Development Review Board approved a zoning permit for the shelter last month, but the paperwork still needs to be signed and then held through a 30-day appeal period, according to board administrator Ken Lerner.

“It ain’t a done deal because there is an appeal period,” Lerner said Thursday from his office.

And the church’s board of elders still needs to approve the proposal, Pastor Stewart said. They were on the fence as of Thursday afternoon, he said.

“They were a little up in the air about it,” Stewart said. “They don’t want to bring about the downfall of the preschool.”

During the two-hour meeting, Stewart said Mark Redmond, executive director of Spectrum Youth & Family Services, had visited religious institutions throughout Burlington and asked those with facilities meeting the necessary fire and zoning requirements whether they would consider turning those facilities into shelters. Redmond, who was out of state this week, was turned down each time, according to Stewart.

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North Avenue Alliance Church, Stewart told the audience, was the end of the line.

“We are a church first and a preschool second,” Stewart said. “Our goal as a church is to promote the message of Jesus Christ. This is a good way to do this.”

Some parents worried aloud, however, that children playing and eating in the gym during the day might catch diseases carried by homeless people sleeping in the gym at night. They also worried about loitering, and homeless people stopping by the school while classes were in session. Several references were made to the recent shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Stewart and others in the room suggested that some of the perceived threats were being exaggerated. Brousseau said the Burlington Emergency Shelter does not have a problem with loitering. Dr. Steve Hale, a pediatrician in Essex, said the preschoolers were much more likely to contract diseases from their classmates than the homeless guests.

But why the preschoolers’ gym, asked several parents, and not, say, the youth center in which the meeting was taking place?

Stewart said the church had considered the youth center, a separate building for middle and high schoolers, but learned from Burlington’s fire marshal that it did not meet the fire code, and needed a sprinkler system, like the gym, to function as a shelter.

A counter proposal was then made for the church to seek a variance, or exception, to the regulation. Parents like Young, Tefts and Stephanie and Steve Davis, who had threatened to pull their children from the preschool, said they would keep them enrolled if the shelter opened in the youth center instead of the gym.

“I’m OK with this building,” Steve Davis said after the meeting.

Stewart said Thursday that he intended to call Burlington’s fire marshal and discuss the possibility of the church getting a variance for the youth center.

The shelter proposal follows the closing this summer of the Committee on Temporary Shelter’s overflow shelter.

With that closing, the cost of sheltering the homeless in motels jumped from $1.4 million to more than $2.2 million between 2011 and 2012, according to the Department for Children and Families, which foots the bill.

Over the same period, the number of unique homeless households staying in hotels leaped from 1,448 to 1,954, and the cost per night increased from $45 to $58.